


One Half Of The Equation

by minxy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1994259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxy/pseuds/minxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Initially, Sam could ignore the bigger picture and break it down into definable, fixable elements: enemies, weapons, wars, chemistry, survival, protection. She can still see it like that; too easily fixed but not understood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Half Of The Equation

Initially, Sam could ignore the bigger picture and break it down into definable, fixable elements: enemies, weapons, wars, chemistry, survival, protection. She can still see it like that; too easily fixed but not understood.

Naquadah was an element unique to certain planets, former hosts, a few enigmatic and currently xenophobic allies and a whole host of enemies. Heavy atomic elements could be manipulated into less stable isotopes that under the right conditions could give off controlled radiation over a limited radius. To O’Neill, she had said “We can use the Naquadah to kill the goa’uld in the field without harming the host, or any humans nearby.” Simple.

O’Neill had said “Sweet.” It was a validation that fell somewhat short of expectations.

Major Carter wrote the proposal, submitted it to the proper authorities and they sent it to Area 51. A problem to be fixed.

Later, they would send her there too, at her own request, with a new name: Colonel. The Naquadah targeting weapon was one of the projects she took on with slight of hand enthusiasm, to distract from the inaccuracies in her mind. She irritated the people in her department for sweeping in and taking over like that, but eventually focus on their own projects won out over their irritation and they let it go. It was her job, and they let her do her job. Privately, Sam thought that it was fortunate no one tried to get too close to her there, because her last bits of what she knew to be true about herself were tied up in her work, and she wasn’t sure they could bear scrutiny.

If anyone had thought about it for a minute, they’d realize that she was designing a weapon capable of killing a good portion of the people most important in her life, but Sam resolutely reminded herself that the Tok’ra had withdrawn, Cassie was safe in Nevada, and she was not on the front lines anymore.

She came back because Daniel asked her to: the rootless one who was the only one to stay at Cheyenne after the rest of SG-1 fled, though he had tried to leave. General Landry wanted her in the mountain too, and offered her a mission to test her newest weapon against an impotent enemy as though it was part of her hard-to-refuse startup package. They asked the rebel Jaffa to escort them and found a planet still under the control of a Goa’uld overseer, loathe to reveal to his downtrodden people that the basis for his power was gone. Mitchell offered the company of SG-1, Teal’c offered the assistance of a small group of Jaffa warriors, and himself. Daniel gave her a half smile that said he was with her, but looked enigmatically at her over the rims of his glasses, face still oriented towards the weapon. They were with her, though none of them knew with absolute certainty what that meant. Still, the loyalty was touching. Sam wondered if what she felt was home, or just the support of people who knew she could blow up stars and didn’t want to mess with her.

Familiarity and distance.

It was ironically safer for her to control this weapon capable of killing her but not Cam or Teal’c or Daniel. She held the gun, she stood behind the muzzle and the shield and as long as she didn’t turn it on herself, she was as safe as possible on the mission.

The Jaffa flanked her, respect for the weapon hitting her like friendly fire. Her team took point and watched her six, and Colonel Carter commanded and wielded a weapon. They took out eight Jaffa with zats, three with bullets, two with staff weapons. When they cornered the goa’uld, Cormanth, he stood too close to his jaffa guards and postured behind his eye makeup. Teal’c took out one guard with a zat before being disarmed by another, Carter fired before she could be disarmed, and the single remaining jaffa caught in the crossfire was offered tretonin.

It was a successful mission, though Sam probably shouldn’t have gone. Yet another second guess after the fact that was really not so helpful.

The injured goa’uld went from arrogant and lucid to confused and pained to weak and begging in the time it took to fight with the remaining guards and for Daniel to explain that their weapon would only kill symbiotes (false Gods, Teal’c amended with finality), not humans (not most humans, Sam amended silently to herself). Cormanth the symbiote died and the host collapsed, catatonic; they helped him back to the gate and Earth to run tests and see if there had been unanticipated side effects. Sam took notes for her lab book, and the post mission report.

There were unanticipated side effects.

She felt it when she walked in the room, and she knew he did as well, when he responded to her in a way elicited by no other stimulus. Catatonia gone, spell broken, but the naquadah in her blood reacted to him differently than it did to a jaffa, or to a healthy symbiote, or any other former host with the markers. She wondered if it would change; wondered how it felt to him and if she had done him irreparable harm. Wondered if the doctors would find the unstable metal continuing to course through his veins to be a threat to others, but doubted it; her pre-mission simulations suggested the radius of the effect was such that the only one likely to be harmed was him.

Daniel spoke with the man haltingly in a language only they could name, but Sam listened anyway. Teal’c inclined his head gravely at the mention of his name, his people, and presumably, his cause. Sam heard Daniel say her name, but she did not smile in acknowledgement; instead she met the eyes of the host through running eye makeup.

***

Sam considered whether she should bring Daniel with her to be her words, then decided he would approve of making the connection in whatever way she could.

She approached the door as a soldier, though, knowing he would feel her presence as she felt his. She knocked for lack of anything else to do after greeting the guards, and assessed whether the on-duty nurse would mind her presence or get in her way: unlikely.

She could feel that he was not behind the door, but she checked anyway, then she moved to stand before the man sitting, back to the door, on the isolation room gurney. He caught her gaze and stood, ornate face and hair at odds with the Air Force issue t-shirt and BDU pants. She held out her hand, pointed to his face, pointed to her own eyes, then held her arm open in invitation.

He began haltingly moving towards her and she didn’t wait to see where he would stop. Moving to the utilitarian medical sink on the short wall by the door, Sam opened a small container of makeup remover soaked cloths, showed him, and stood in the left hand side of the mirror, his reflection far back over her right shoulder.

She wiped off the makeup on her right eye, swiping over the brow, back across the lid, and carefully in her lashes. She turned the cloth and dabbed under her eye as well. Touching up, she turned from the mirror and showed him her face and the black on the cloth. He came up to stand before her, a tall and imposing shadow. Sam carefully turned back into the mirror and removed the makeup from her other eye, impulsively rubbing the cloth over her mouth as well, as though she had spit or thrown up and wanted to remove the outward proof.

Holding his eyes in the mirror, Sam offered the man a cloth. He walked up behind her, and she turned away from her mirrored reflection, gazing instead at him. Tall and slim, he looked misleadingly younger than she; with dark straight hair braided back with leather ties, his brows were dark and his eyes obscured by kohl and paint. It was a sweet face, now the goa’uld within could not twist it into profanity.

He was inexpert at cleaning his face, leaving streaks and smears with the cloth as he tore at the kohl. Sam stood just behind his left shoulder as he dropped the cloth and leaned on the porcelain, gazing in his own eyes and lost in his nightmares. When he looked up and saw Sam again, she reached up with deliberate gentleness and turned him to face her, raw pain smeared across his face, his nearness causing a quiver in her bones.

She had to look up to see him, but she felt the part of the mother as she took a fresh cloth and removed the ravaged marks from his brows. He closed his eyes for her ministrations, cloth running over his lids and outward to catch the streaks on his high cheekbones; he opened them only after her hands had left his face.

The sound of her picking up the container and closing it was jarring in the silence; the spent cloths cold after the almost contact of her fingers on his skin. Her turning away from him to discard the makeup soaked cotton felt wrong, but once begun momentum took her away from the intimacy of the corner and back into the fishbowl of the isolation room. The greater space did not ease the constriction in her lungs, nor the sense that the air was stale.

When the host spoke, it was in a strange baritone, and her back was turned, so she didn’t believe it was him until she saw him when he spoke a second time. Her words in response had harsher consonants and fewer long vowel sounds, but she matched his minor key. “I wish I could speak the language you’ve chosen, but I can’t.”

He let her leave then. She went to her office and reapplied her makeup without looking too closely.

***

There was a briefing. Teal’c reported the free Jaffa had expressed great excitement over the weapon and its results and were interested in continuing to work together on the project.

Daniel explained the language and home planet of the host deduced with the help of the free Jaffa. He said the man’s name was Terim. No one was surprised, and Sam privately wondered if she had forgotten the name or if Daniel had just never told her. Dr. Lam was explaining in detail the health of the host since she’d known him and her expectations of suppressed immune system being the biggest obstacle to full physical recovery as Sam ghosted past Daniel’s eyes over the meeting table and through his glasses. She had nothing to add to the briefing beyond murmuring that the weapon had performed as expected. No one else tried to catch her eye.

It was agreed that Terim should be taken to a more familiar environment as soon as possible. They discussed taking him to his home planet first, and other options if that didn’t work out.

They needn’t have bothered. Terim threw himself into the wormhole as it was engaging, leaving Sam with a lingering sensation of not-quite-right naquadah twisting in her gut.

***

That night, Sam didn’t recognize herself in the bathroom mirror, standing in her civilian shirt, partly unbuttoned and the softest cotton sleeping pants she had. She wiped off her makeup, but it didn’t shake the disorientation. Like gravity had decided to take the night off and get drunk.

The water was accidentally colder than she usually set it to wash her face, and she forgot to reach for her soap, instead splashing commandingly over her face repeatedly and with panicky movements. Abruptly, she yanked on the faucets and turned the water scalding, a hiss of breath at the temperature on her hands and a shriek of pain before a drop touched her face. Sam dropped her hands out of the water to brace herself on the sink instead and lowered her head, unconsciously swinging her body back to let her head hang below her shoulders, trying to take deep breaths through the water dripping off her face. The faucet ran loudly, and the steam taunted her eyes.

She sank to her haunches, still holding on to the sink with too hot water running in it and rocking on her ankles, forehead barely missing the ledge of the counter as she wavered, water dripping down her neck. She breathed in gasps, the involuntary nature of the act escaping her. The gasps became vocal; keening rising to frantic sounds breaking the white noise of the water faucet. Yells: unladylike, unsoldierlike. It didn’t ease the twist in her gut or the tightness of her throat, but it caused her to hear drums in stacatto beats. Sets of five.

When she heard her name through the steaming water she staggered toward it, confusion unreleased, to the front door. She barely registered that she heard a key in the lock, the moment at the door where he stared at her, taking in her face, clothes, state of damp, confusion. He walked right past her to some undisclosed location in the house. Sam almost thought to ask herself why he was there, but noticed instead that he left his shoes on, where she would have taken hers off at the door. Still staring at the floor where he’d left shoeprints in her carpet, she belatedly closed the door, and wiped her chin on the front of her shirt as the water dripping there started to itch.

There was a sudden absence of white noise: Daniel had shut off the water, but she could hear him coming back around the corner in the front hall to where she was still standing.

She might have heard him ask if she was alright. She might have said fine. There may have been only silence. He handed her a towel. She held it to her mouth and smelled the fabric softener scent as she walked on autopilot out of the hallway to her living room.

Daniel followed with a minimum of fidgeting or worried looks, took the towel back and brushed her forehead with it, moving with awkwardly light pressure over her ears to dry the rivulets of water exploring her neck.

“You are the only one I’ve ever been close to who has survived, Sam,” he said.

“Survived what?” Her voice tasted acidic in her throat, and sounded underused. She looked unseeing around her living room for something to lean on.

“What happened today never happened to you.” He was half placating, half explaining. “Sarah is running, Sha’uri is dead, Vala is a nutcase, and probably dead…and today, Terim. You are the only one who made it, Sam, and stayed.”

There was a twist in her ribs as Sam reacquainted herself with the idea that there were others living through the psychedelic adventures of recent years, who might feel the same weights she did, if not in the same ways. She knew it more than she believed it, but she believed in Daniel, and again she wondered if she was home. In a bizarre abstract-suddenly-literal moment, she looked at the walls of her house. “Maybe we stay with each other, Daniel.” Limply, she found the back of a sofa and rested against it. _Maybe the others need something else, or maybe they can make it on their own. Jack. Teal’c. Maybe they’re stronger._

Daniel sat on a stool at the kitchen island in front of her and looked half-seeing at where she’d draped the towel next to her on the cushions.

“I haven’t made it.” She stated abruptly, then met Daniel’s eyes. “I haven’t survived very well at all, Daniel.”

“Yes, you have. You are still here. That’s something.”

There was a beat where he smiled, and her chin fell weightily against her chest. Her throat felt steamed and her eyes burned dryly, but then Daniel was there and pulled her up to a proper embrace. She held tightly and pulled hard: the day had been foggy and opaque and he was heat and muscle. She pressed her nose into the grooves of his corduroy jacket. He would hold her. If she needed him to, he would lift her up.

She hiccupped. Or, it might have been a single note of a laugh. Or a sob. “It could have been any of us, you know.” She said by way of cryptic explanation, wrenching her head sideways so he could hear her voice unmuffled by his jacket. “You and the general, you fought like an old married couple. Teal’c could help any of us with anything. You and I…”

She trailed off, so Daniel supplied dryly: “Wondertwins,” and brushed his palm against her temple moving her hair out of her face as he stepped out of the embrace.

She really did chokingly giggle as he moved away, her hand finding the discarded towel and clenching it. “At first, yeah. Then it changed to you asking if we were in a relationship.”

“Well, resurrection will have that confusing effect.” His eyes shifted down and left, and Sam calmed her need to giggle.

“We sound like it, sometimes.”

“Confused?” He offered half a wry grin, testing. She flickered a smile and caught his eyes.

“It could have been any of us.”

“No, it couldn’t.” Daniel had a soft voice when he chose. “None of us could stay dead, but you and I were the ones who came back, Sam.”

Are they stronger? She wanted to ask as she glanced away and then back to him. She concentrated on breathing in enough air to support her voice.

“Are they stronger than we are, Daniel?”

His eyes widened a bit at the question, and shaking his head preceded speaking, though he held her eyes. “I don’t know Sam. I don’t think so. Does it matter if it helps?”

“What if we’re just alone together, and it doesn’t help?” A conversation where he’s in an autumn corduroy jacket and shoes leaving a trail in her carpet, and she is wearing pajama bottoms and her civilian shirt falling away from her neck, holding on to a towel like a raft?

“Then there could be worse things than company in misery, right?”

It was absurd, ironic, farcical. Trust Daniel to see it. She smiled at him, genuinely, and felt her lungs relax, breath coming easier.

Daniel looked at his shoes and rocked a bit, settling his hands in his pockets now they weren’t needed in an embrace. “To be honest, I’ve wondered if anyone else could do it anymore. Be company to us. Maybe we’re set apart now.”

“You think we’ll end up together in our dotage as well as our misery?” She said letting her head rock a bit to the side to watch him, remembering the towel and absently drying a few lingering waterdrops of the backs of her hands with it.

“There could be worse things, than company.”

Sam dabbed at her hair with the towel and looked at her kitchen island for a moment as she thought about that. “Is that why it couldn’t have been any of us?”

His voice after a beat was low, and soft. “Would you rather it had been Jack?”

Sam blinked before she looked at Daniel across the non-existent barrier between her living room and kitchen. His eyes waited to meet hers as she shook her head once, smiled a little and said, “You?”

His smile was slow but genuine as it grew across his face. “Ah, no. He doesn’t understand me, really.”

Sam nodded once, amused and thoughtful. Daniel looked the picture of indecision, too tentative and still dressed for the outdoors. Sam put the towel down and said. “You want to take off that jacket and stay awhile?”

He smiled and set the jacket over the back of the sofa, symmetric with where Sam had set the towel. She watched him take off his shoes. He was bending to put them down near his coat when she said “I was worried that maybe I’d failed something critical a long time ago.” He stood and looked at her as she continued. “That I’d lost who I was and somehow only managed to survive on the most basic level. I didn’t want that to be all there is. I didn’t want to lose myself.”

“Is this about Jolinar?”

“I fought the blending, but I felt like less when she was gone. And it wasn’t only that, but now I don’t know how to be alone and I don’t know how to let someone in, and I’m not sure there’s enough of me to make it worth it for them. If I had an anchor of something constant I could gauge if I’ve changed irredeemably. But it was wrong with Pete, I lost my Dad, Cassie’s too young… Maybe I’ve earned the right to a breakdown, I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you’ve lost who you are,” he supplied. “Existential crises notwithstanding, I remember, and all the things we’ve lived through should change us.”

“That’s more than just surviving, though.”

“Yes. Surviving is an integral and not to be underestimated component, however.”

Sam closed her eyes for a long enough moment that she noted the color of her eyelids. “And this is a conversation that deserves a soft chair and a cup of coffee, I think.” She opened her eyes to Daniel’s ‘I could drink coffee’ look and thought that maybe she was home.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to beta delphia2000


End file.
